The Erie Canal, called by its opposition, Clinton’s Ditch, named after De Witt Clinton, Governor of New York, was a key factor in the population and development of the Great Lake states. The canal made it possible for prosperity and culture to flow from East to West and West to East. 

After the federal government refused to get involved in funding the building of a 350 mile ditch, calling it nonsense, the state of New York took on the project under the leadership of De Witt Clinton. The Erie Canal was to make a waterway from the American West to New York and beyond by connecting Lake Erie with the Atlantic, which turned out to be another brilliant idea that helped make America the greatest and most prosperous  nation on earth.

Even George Washington spoke of the importance of such a passage in 1784, stating, “The Western settlers stand as it were upon a pivot.  The touch of a feather would turn them any way….smooth the road and make the way easy for them, and then see what an influx of articles will be poured upon us; how amazingly our exports will be increased by them, and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble and expense we may encounter to effect it.”     

New York understood that they must take immediate action or risk losing trade to the Mississippi and Susquehanna Rivers.  Digging began at Rome, New York on July 4, 1817, a task that would not be completed until October 2, 1825.

The site was chosen because it was a part of what was then known as “Long Level”, a stretch of many miles of level ground where the work would be comparatively easy.  The canal was built with a new invention of underwater cement, by hired gangs of Native Americans, of immigrant Irish, Welsh, and other nationalities.  Gradually a canal four feet deep, twenty-eight feet across at the bottom, and forty feet across at the top crossed the three hundred and fifty mile width of the state of New York, overcoming a seven hundred foot land elevation problem with eighty-one locks.

The diggers fought their way through thick woods, rocky barrens, and swamps.  As the canal was completed, it was opened to limited use along the way until its completion on October 2, 1825.  The canal was so successful, the state of New York regained its construction investment of seven million dollars the first decade of its use.

Population Growth

At once the raw products of rural New York began moving on canal waters toward the cities where machines, operated through water power, might turn them into factory-made goods.  Villages grew into cities.  Rochester and Buffalo, which held about one thousand citizens in 1820, by 1840, reached twenty thousand each.  Frontier settlements that had been scatters of log houses assumed the dignity of ports on a teeming waterway, having cabins replaced with framed houses. 

More important than the cheap shipment of goods along the waterway was the movement of people, causing the Western states to fill up. A guidebook of 1825 reported that five hundred people a day were going west.  Ohio, seventeenth in population among the states quickly moved to third, and Indiana went from twentieth to tenth in population in the same time period. As for western cities, five years after the canal opened, Cleveland had increased in population more than 400 percent and Detroit more than 300 percent.     

The cost of freight dropped dramatically, but more important was the way the Erie Canal changed the lives of people. It opened up the flow of commerce and narrowed the gap between the rich and the poor.  There had been very rigid differences in America between the aristocrats and the common people.  As the latter became more prosperous because of the canal these disappeared and true democracy won more ground.

Real estate and personal property rose in value along the canal.  Pillared “Greek Revival” houses advanced architecture.  Standards of living became higher as the canal made more Americans prosperous.

The Erie Canal brought money and in its wake a more leisurely and more cultured life.  Many of the passengers bound west took with them ideas on living which they had obtained from observations on their journey. Thus the canal made its impression on the life of the United States as a nation, an impression that Americans realize today has had a lasting and ennobling effect.

References taken from the writings of Historian, Carl Cramer, Author